It doesn’t matter.”Īnd their relationship is different. “I could come live with you,” she said, “where you live. “I would want to, though, if we could.” She did not know where her own calmness came from.

“I know,” she said, almost as quietly as before. Ann and Wade watched them converge and scatter like a handful of black sand thrown against the sky.Īfter a long time he said, “It wouldn’t be right.” As she waited to find out, dozens of blackbirds, startled at nothing, rose off the telephone wire at once. But really it was the only time that such a thing had occurred to her, and the words escaped her so quietly that she wondered at first if he had even heard. She was very surprised to hear herself say this, but even so her voice was calm, as if she had been intending to say it all along. “I could take care of you,” she said softly. One night, she makes an impulsive offer that will forever change her life, already knowing that he was having problems with his memory, knowing that their relationship will be different. He approaches her asking to start up his lessons again, not speaking of the murder of his youngest daughter, May, the disappearance of June, and the arrest of his wife Jenny for May’s murder. After she sees the faces of his family on television-the faces of his wife Jenny, then June, then May-she’s sure she’ll never see him again. It would be the one and only time that Ann saw June. She also doesn’t realize until later that she spotted his oldest daughter, June, only nine at the time, standing in front of the locker of a boy she had a crush on. Ann loves her job teaching choir at a small, rural charter school in Idaho, and although she’s not quite aware of it, she later realizes that she loved Wade from nearly the first moment she saw him. Wade Mitchell is a married father of two young girls when he approaches the 12-years-younger Ann for piano lessons. You’ll want to make sure you have some time when you start this lovely, devastating book because once you start, you won’t want to put it down until you’re finished.

Idaho by Emily Ruskovich is a stunning debut novel about love and forgiveness, about the violence of memory and the equal violence of its loss.

Emily ruskovich books